"Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart." 1 Peter 1:22This command implies an important message.
Today, there are so many Christians out there who turn their setting apart for the Lord into a show of utmost pride and arrogance. They will say, "Since I am holy, I can no longer associate with anybody else who isn't holy in the exact way that I am." Obviously, this becomes a problem for building a community, for there will be a separation of us vs. them, rather than looking out and seeing potential new members.
Some people out there will even turn that arrogance into pure hatred, continuing to separate them from the outside world. They will deceive themselves, thinking that because they are holy, nobody else can possibly be. They think that with their purification through Jesus, they are entitled to become judges of everybody around them. But that's completely in contrast with what we have been told. Jesus has commanded us many times to love not only our neighbors, but our enemies, those who are strangers, the sick, the poor, and even those we don't even understand. That's what the above message gets at as well.
We have been saved through Jesus. We have been made whole because of Jesus. We are loved because of Jesus. How does anything else besides love make sense after this purification? Because we have been purified with the God of love, we too should show our love towards everybody else out there.
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